The Bridge

Book IV: To Qwell the Tide

by euhal allen

Table of Contents
Book IV, chapter 1,
part 2 appears
in this issue.

Chapter 1: The Skeltz

part 3 of 3

* * *

The next time Jo’Eya came through her Door into the committee room everyone remembered to smile. Being told the antics of their mother and friend they were soon laughing and agreeing that Katia was one who just never seemed to change.

“Sean,” asked Olga, “do you remember when we had to play as the von Seltzen kids?”

“Do I?” Sean answered. “It was worth it to see Mom going around as Gloria von Seltzen. I never figured out how a person like Mom could pretend to so snooty and make people believe it. As much as the whole village hated Mrs. von Seltzen, Mom hated her worse.”

“I’ll bet she looks forward to every party and to poking holes in more pompous hides,” added Hi Tinker. “Thank you, Jo’Eya, for helping us to see that Cyr and Katia are all right. We still have not bee able to communicate with her, and she needs to know about Charlie Phillip’s death.”

“Katia knows,” said Jo’Eya. “I told her, and she is very good at virtual crying, too.

“However, good as it is to speak of loved ones, especially family, this is not why I have come here. It is time to have our talk. You must understand some things about us and about Katia and Cyr and what they are doing.

“Over the time that Galactic Council has been in existence there have been, as you know, a number of races that have been englobed, yours being the latest one. With the exception of the first, the Skeltz — who were not only englobed, but destroyed — each of those races have, with the help of the Qwell’Na, conquered that which caused their englobement and have become a part of the Tunnel Worlds.

“It is to this civilization that Katia and Cyr have become your ambassadors. It is this civilization, hidden from the Galactic Council, that you, also, may become a part of. To do so you must merely allow the Galactic Council to find and englobe Starhell as well as Earth. Once that is done, each of your worlds will be fitted with Sub-Quantum Carrier Portals, and you will be instructed in the ways of the Tunnel Worlds’ governmental processes.

“Once this step is taken you will never again be threatened by the Galactic Council. But once this step is taken, the worlds and resources of the Galactic Council will also forever be cut off from contact with you. Your people on New Earth and their lives and future will be lost to you.

“The Qwell’Na, as you know, feel that family is almost the strongest thing in the universe. To do such a thing, to cut yourself off from family without the greatest of reasons, would be, to us, a thing of almost irreparable dishonor. That is why we give you this information.

“Your other choice is to face the Galactic Council with absolute proof that they are wrong in their judgment that those they have ordered englobed can never be rehabilitated.

“Our people have waited many generations for a race to come forth in the galaxy who could offer such proof. It is our belief that you may be that race.

“Already, some of your people, those of New Earth, are respected members of the Galactic Council. Already you have had a member of your race, Katia Shapirov, become the leader of the Galactic Council. Already you have another, Me’Avi Shapirov, who is proving herself a worthy offspring of her grandmother. These are proofs to us that Council policy is possible to change.

“Your success in making this planet, Starhell, what it is and will be are also proofs that you are maturing as a race. If you succeed in convincing the Galactic Council that you have become civilized as they understand it, you can be the opening wedge for the rest of the Tunnel Worlds to be able to openly and peacefully become a partner in a greater, more diversified and stronger galactic civilization.”

“What you are telling us,” Sean said, “is that we can choose a safe and sure way to become of this Tunnel Worlds’ group of races, or we can challenge the Galactic Council’s whole way of thinking.

“That doesn’t make sense, Jo’Eya. We have been challenging that way of thinking with this whole project. Before that we sought to challenge that thinking by recivilizing groups on Earth; that is, until my niece found out and threw the englobement switch.

“And before that. my mother, their own Grand Minister, tried to use the Cernon Sector to show that humankind could go to new worlds and, working together in a cooperative and reasonably manner, make them work.

“Nothing we did made them change their minds. What makes your people think that it can be any different now?’

“Now,” replied Jo’Eya, “they are fearful. Over the generations, as we waited for the target race to appear, we made ourselves useful in almost every department of the Council’s government. Our people occupied by hard work, honesty and diligence many positions of trust.

“This we did for two reasons. One was to help the stability of the Council; and the other was to be able, when the target race did appear, to cause a disruption great enough that the Council would relegate that race to a secondary status as to problems to be handled.

“Now the Council is frightened as to what we are up to. They will be looking for us for some time.

“You will have time to complete more of your work here and on Earth. When they do begin to look your way again, they must see not rebel worlds set on causing troubles in the Galaxy but civilized worlds that have turned away from their earlier, mad, fixation on self-destruction.”

“You say that you have been seeking this target race — somehow I wish you had used a different phrase — for generations. What were you doing to make that search, if I may ask?”

“Our people, the Qwell’Na, conceived and — with our technology carefully inserted into the right places in galactic science — created the entire Bridge program. With the exception of you, no single civilization has been englobed, though a very few did self-destruct, since that program started.”

* * *

Katia and Cyr, holoforms in their place in the Diet Hall, looked at the two mottos etched into the walls so very long ago;

To die in protecting the weak is to die with honor.
In a world of sand, glass can be made.

How, they were thinking, would they explain to their people the importance of those simple yet meaningful statements that characterized the governments of the Tunnel Worlds?

“I bet,” thought Katia, “Charlie Philips could have done it. He made a lot of seemingly complicated things simple.”

Just then the Ambassador Prime took his place and called for order. The First Head of the Family Heads of the Qwell’Na, acting as secretary to the Ambassador Prime was called forth to report on the situation brewing in Galactic Council space.

“In a world of sand, glass can be made. Even now we are seeking the making of such glass. The Council’s fleet, as you know, has landed garrisons on Qwell and are seeking evidence of our whereabouts. We have seen to it that such evidence is present. But, it will be found only after a great deal of work. Found too easily, they will be suspicious of it.

“That evidence will build upon the finds of Council ships of actual Starhell installations — there were, as you may remember, a small number of those mining facilities in the Cernon Sector of Council Space — and this evidence will point to the possibility that those facilities were not of human but of Qwell’Na origin.

“Some of that evidence will, vaguely, point to the Lorgar Sector as the original source of the building, and evacuating of those facilities. There have also been planted in the Lorgar Sector a number of facilities obviously in the state of being removed. These, hopefully, will encourage the Galactic Council to order a thorough sweep through that Sector, a process that will take several years.

“Their explorations, however, will not be in vain, for there are a number of worlds in that sector that are rich in resources and that the Council will be able to use, including several that supplied the precious metals that we beamed aboard cargo freighters coming out of the Cernon Sector. You will recall that those added resources made the Cernon Sector seem to pay for itself.”

Katia, laughing to herself, mumbled, “So that’s how all that cargo ‘enhancement’ happened!”

“At this point,” continued the Diet secretary, “the Qwell’Na has supplied the Starhell Oversight Committee with Beam Portals to Earth and made our force-transparency technology available with the insertion of some formulas that help them build the Portals. Earth now has its star field back shining in their night sky.

“We, as you know, have also co-opted two of their most valuable resources and had them join us here in this assembly.

“Our greatest possible threat comes not from some military action of the Council Fleet against our human protégés, but the elevation to the office of Grand Minister of the former Galactic Chronicler, Kran Xhelsher. This man is of a peculiar intellect that has time and again been able to understand and act upon things that should not have been obvious to anyone. As Galactic Chronicler — perhaps the wisest appointment made by former Grand Minister Shapirov — he was effectively closeted in an atmosphere of academics.

“Should we be less than careful in any of our attempts to direct the paths the Council should take, it is probable that the new Grand Minister will detect those attempts. That could spell ruin for our whole project.

“A second danger is the alliance of this new Grand Minister with the final et Sharma of Earth and now Minister of New Earth, Me’Avi Shapirov. She too — like her grandmother — has a remarkable mind. Her political partnership with Grand Minister Xhelsher magnifies the danger from both of them tenfold.”

* * *

Michael Fellini’s work had caused an uproar in the music world. When it was found out that he was only an eight-year old boy, the uproar became an avalanche of demands for his presence on New Earth, both to complete his musical education and to show the galaxy that the loss of the Blue Planet had not destroyed the creativity of man.

Kalvin Shapirov made a hurried trip back to Doris and spent weeks arguing with the planetary government over the future of the young lad. Doris’s legislature, naturally seeing the boy as a resource for the betterment of the planet, backed the claims of the boy’s father, a man with a golden gleam in his eyes, who sought to legally bind the boy in his custody, while others — those who understood art and music at a greater than planetary pride level, and who thought that a man who had last seen his son as a newborn responsibility he did not want to share — worked with Kalvin to place the boy into the galactic artistic world.

Finally, Kalvin, berating the leaders of Doris as stiflers of a galactic treasure, made his way to his ship, a Council courier ship loaned to him to bring the boy back to New Earth and took off for the trip back home.

The Doris legislators, flushed with their victory, sent the boy’s father back to the farm to get the boy, who had been under official protection, and bring him back to the capital to star in a victory parade through the city. Then the father, sitting proudly besides this boy he had not seen since birth, mentally counted the money he would make from this happy genetic accident.

It was a few days later that the people of Doris learned that Michael Fellini had been spirited out of his home before Kalvin’s ship had landed on the planet and that the boy that had been protected was the son of another farmer in the area of the Fellini home. Michael Fellini, and his mother, it seemed, had boarded the Council courier ship almost as soon as it had landed.

The Minister from Doris immediately, in the midst of a Council session, demanded the floor and demand that the kidnappers be apprehended and the boy be returned to his rightful home and people.

The Grand Minister listened patiently to the diatribe and then recognized the Minister from New Earth.

Me’Avi Shapirov, standing, merely mentioned that the mother was the one who had contacted Maestro Shapirov in the first place; that the mother had requested that Michael be given a musical education somewhat more complete than was available on Doris; and that the mother was with and in charge of the boy; therefore the charge of kidnapping was ridiculous.

She then, with a smile on her face, read from a section of Doris Planetary law, Section 29, paragraph 317, subtitle 6, that stated “Parental rights, though not responsibilities, are forfeit to any parent abandoning a child to the care of another without compensation.”

“Mr. Fellini, the boy’s father, by Doris Planetary Statutes has no legal rights to his son or his son’s property. Now that he has shown up again and admitted his paternity, he does have the responsibility for monetary payments to the mother for his share of Michael’s upkeep, plus, of course, penalties and interest on both the amount owed and the interest. My assistant tells me that the amount owed his wife is a substantial amount, and growing.”

Since the whole scene was videocast throughout the galaxy, as were all Council sessions, it seemed hardly surprising that a certain Gino Fellini had disappeared from his quarters and society in general. It was said by some, later, that a miner in a far-away village by the name of Giuseppe Rossini resembled him, but no one bothered to check it out.

To be continued...

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